What We Lose

by Zinzi Clemmons

If I look long enough at a flower, I can see the color of her cheeks in the

Her parents look on consentingly, full of Brooklyn laissez-faire.

He writes me a check for $700.

between what she represented to the country (her nickname is “Mother of the Nation”) and what she is alleged to have done is almost impossible to reconcile.

These are questions I wrestle with in the days and weeks that I consider my own pregnancy.

Not only is Mrs Mandela associated with the team, in fact the team is her own creation.

celebrate maternality as the basis for engaging in antimilitarist work.

question the implicit belief that only “mothers” with “children of their own” have a real stake in the future of humanity.

Madikizela-Mandela denied that they were being held against their will and stated that she had rescued them from sexual abuse at the manse.

all implicate Ms Madikizela-Mandela, either directly or indirectly, in Seipei’s murder or its attempted cover-up.

“the worst times are when I wake up and I think, ‘I have to call Mama to say hello.’”

My grandfather thanked God for all the family that had come from near and far. He asked God for our safe flight back home.

feels like the breeze coming off the river. It enwraps me with its warmth. It comforts me. It smells like her breath.

My body feels already extremely pregnant, as does my mind. There is little difference between week two and week eight.

They—a young, handsome black family, installed as our nation’s figureheads, buoyed by the support of millions—were new to us, as a nation.

one could infer the presence of the departed, of all those who had made this day possible.

less a meditation on the absent parent, more a celebration of the one who was the single constant in my life.

As he is hanging up the phone, I swear I hear a woman’s voice on the other end. Sometimes I call his number and just cry into his voicemail.

have had no strength to terminate the baby, or to handle an adoption;

When I tell her how far along I am, she sighs heavily. She knows what I have been hiding from myself the past few weeks. The baby is a baby now.

The shame of having to admit to the world that I can’t care for the baby seems unbearable.

“What’s her name?” I demand of him, and he tells me.

“Dad, I’m pregnant.”

For a while, we sit there at the table in silence, slightly older and fatter than our high school selves,

Chronic pain is one of the most difficult states for humans not suffering from it to imagine.

mood altering, causing changes in personality and even hallucinations. Pain can be a disease in itself.

had more patience, and physically, she actually felt lighter.

and then to my size, a healthy 6, before she was bedridden and we stopped counting.

M will be motherless. I pray that I will never be childless.

It is complete and irreversible.

To this big, beautiful, fucked-up country, especially my black and brown brothers and sisters: We gon’ be alright.